by Simon Archer
“I guess I climbed into the bed too fast,” Hopper announced. She slid to the edge of the mattress to get undressed, but Tinker stopped her.
By now, my pants were down around my ankles, but Tinker had shifted her focus to Hopper for the moment, so I quickly kicked them off and did the same for my shirt. I heard the fabric hit the ground as Tinker helped Hopper remove her clothes. There was less urgency between the two of them now, and Tinker took her time helping Hopper, as if unwrapping a much-desired, fragile gift. She kissed Hopper’s neck and let her hands linger after removing each article of clothing. They had left me wanting for the moment, but I didn’t mind, as I was thoroughly enjoying the tantalizing interaction between the two of them.
Hopper, suddenly in tune to my presence once more, sank back down beside me and let her fingers trace patterns across my chest. Tinker crawled over to the other side and began kissing down my body in a deliciously slow crawl. My desire swelled because of the war between Hopper’s fingers and Tinker’s lips, and it wasn’t the only thing that had done so. As Tinker reached her goal down past my stomach, I relished in the warmth of her tongue against my skin. Hopper slid up against me once more, her soft fur luxurious as it brushed up against me, and I wrapped my arm around her waist to pull her closer. She swung one leg over my chest, straddling me as I followed the curves of her entire body with both hands. Behind Hopper, Tinker was busy taking me into her mouth as her tongue flicked and danced against me. It felt incredible, and due to Tinker’s efforts, the intense sensations that coursed through my body drove forward.
As I committed the curves of Hopper’s body to memory, she leaned down and kissed me, slowly and deeply. I let my fingers weave through her fur as I gripped her tight and pulled her close. I felt Tinker back off, which disappointed me only for a moment until I felt her slide up beside me.
“Your turn.” She gave Hopper a meaningful look, and Hopper’s eyes glinted as she realized what Tinker meant. Hopper leaned in toward Tinker and their lips locked. I let Hopper slip away from me as they tumbled over each other until Hopper was on her back. Tinker slid down Hopper’s body until she found her way between Hopper’s thighs. She lavished her friend with the same attention she had just given me, only this time, she scooted up on her knees, waving her tail high in the air, tempting me to come closer.
I didn’t wait for a more formal invitation. I pushed myself up to my knees and approached her from behind, sliding my hands up over her hips as I looked down at Hopper’s face. Ecstasy was etched across her features as she bunched the silk sheets up in her hands, and a moan escaped her lips with every stroke of Tinker’s tongue. I pressed myself up against Tinker’s body, and I felt her warmth and her saturated fur, and I knew. I knew that her waving tail had been telling me exactly what she wanted.
As I slowly slid inside of her, I felt her breathing change. Hopper’s moans paused for a moment, but then Tinker resumed her work, and the moans became more and more intense. As I moved, slowly thrusting in and out, I enjoyed my view and I fed off Hopper’s obvious pleasure. Tinker showed no signs of letting up on her friend, and Hopper looked to be inching dangerously close to a climax.
My thrusts became more and more forceful as I felt my own pressure beginning to build. I didn’t want this to end quite yet, but the looks on Hopper’s face, and the involuntary shudders coming from Tinker, told me I wasn’t alone. The two bunnies were enjoying themselves to the fullest extent, and they were both loving the opportunity for me to lavish them with unplanned attention. I was glad to provide that for them, since it allowed me to benefit from the show.
Tinker must have found just the right spot, because Hopper’s back suddenly arched up as she tugged the sheets closer. She squeezed her eyes shut, and her moans had jumped up a few octaves until she let out a squeal, her body releasing all traces of tension as she found her release. I felt Tinker’s body react to Hopper’s big finish, growing warm and more saturated, and in turn, my body stiffened further. I continued to rock my hips up against Tinker, but now, with no one to taste, she was resting her cheek against the soft sheets, moaning between each of my thrusts. Her moans grew in intensity as I continued to move against her. Hopper lay beside her, gently stroking her fur as we guided each other toward our conclusion.
I felt Tinker’s release moments before my own. She tightened around me before squirming against the sheets and uttering a series of high-pitched squeals, and the sensation of her release triggered my own. I let go, giving Tinker everything that I had to give, and then collapsed down on top of her. Hopper reached over and tilted my chin up, planting a firm kiss on my lips as she lay among us. I sighed as I embraced the aftermath of our unplanned adventure, and I let my body slide off Tinker’s splayed out body and sink into the sheets.
I could have laid there forever. Unfortunately, someone chose that exact moment to swing the door open and barge, unannounced, into the room.
8
“Blessing of the Regent?” With all of the girls satisfied for the moment, the timer run out, and their loyalties officially sworn, the six new members, Huey, Duey, Louie, Larry, Curly, and Moe, had gathered with me and a precautionary eight of my boys in a room deep in the keep to pick up the conversation where we left off. I would have gone with the names of knights from the King Arthur legend if they hadn’t given me so much lip. Maybe I’d switch them later if that was where the trouble ended with them.
The schedule that Tinker had come up with was almost foolproof, except for two glaring flaws. One was that every girl was trying to barter for the very next spot in line at all times, regardless of whether they had just had a turn or not. I was pretty sure Miffy owes Pantoufles a few thousand free shoulder punches, Jessica is paying Cecily in baked tarts for her spot, and Lola was going to be waited on hand-and-foot by five other girls to be pushed so far back. Second flaw, at no point was an unprecedented breach of schedule, like what Hopper and Tinker had requested, a stabilizing element. Once they had found out about it, they all barged in and refused to be left out of the extra time slot. Hopper and Tinker had enough of the time already, so they let them all join at once. And that was before all of the bargaining. Very wild night, but now they were all asleep, and we had some things I had to make sure weren’t going to fester if we didn’t nip them in the bud immediately. Then it would have been right back to that bed.
“That’s what Sir Wildheart called those powers,” Huey explained, “He said that it was part of the next evolution of the superior Wolf. Soon, any Wolf could be blessed with protection against any imperfection, truly becoming the masters of this world.”
“Sounds like some Nazi propaganda to me.” I leaned back in my chair, resting my feet on the table we had gathered around. “Does the blessing always let you come back from dying, with a nasty transformation and all?”
“No, they’re all unique,” Louie replied. “The other champion challengers had special abilities, unlike their powerful magic, that let them challenge anyone that the Regent deems necessary.”
“Is it only the champions that get these blessings?”
“The Regent himself is blessed,” Curly said. “Those who are powerful, like the members of the council and those loyal to the Regent, must all be superior to others of Wolfkind so that they may rule us more justly and with perfect wisdom.”
“Uh-huh, sounds delightful.” There was going to be a lot of sifting of Wolf Reich trimmings on all of this information, but I’d get something useful. “Who exactly does this Regent Silverfang represent, anyway? Seems to me like he’s just running the show like he owns the place.”
“The, um, His Utmost Highest,” Moe answered. “It’s a hex to say this true holy title out loud. Wildheart forbade us to say it at any time. It is with the Utmost Highest’s authority that the Regent speaks in all matters. To hear his word is to hear from His Utmost Highest’s mou--”
“Right, right, right, the Big Bad Wolf’s the bee’s knees, perfect blonde, and the Regent can use him as an idol for all of h
is cult nonsense.” I was already sick of the Wolf Reich schtick, and we’d barely gotten anywhere. “What is the holy title?”
“The, um, his name…” Moe trailed off.
“He is called the… His holy title is the…” Larry couldn’t get it out either.
“The hex don’t reach out to the backwater I run.” I placed my tongue firmly in my cheek. “You can speak your mind freely. I do not operate under their law, and neither do you.”
“Only the Regent and the council say his title, my lord.” Duey defended their inability to speak. “They are the pure ones in his presence.”
“Well, you obviously learned it, so it’s already been put into your brains.” I put my feet off the table, slapping the chair down as I leaned in. “That’s a mind hex if I’ve ever heard of one. You’re already screwed. And you work for me now. Double-screwed for life. Do you think you can get triple-screwed? You’re all already dead dogs if you think that asshat still controls you.”
None of them spoke. Again. Though this time out of superstitious fear rather than defiance. The reason for it didn’t make me any happier, however.
“The boss wants that title, so give it up!” Toby, one of the boys I had brought in, slammed his fist on the table to spook the new blood. “Do you think that hex is stronger than the boss? Is it untouchable? He kills the untouchable! You’ve seen what he can do! What he’s already done! Stupid names don’t scare the boss!” With a look and a hand gesture, I halted Toby's retreat from his hostile display.
“While Toby may have been a tad aggressive about it,” I popped my neck with a quick turn of my head, “He does have a point. I’ve proven myself stronger than a lot of very powerful Wolves, and I’m not a Wolf myself. I don’t have these blessings. I don’t have the strength or the speed. I don’t even have claws. And yet I’m kicking ass where I go. When people say something I need to do can’t be done, I find out how to do it, anyway. I won’t say I’m anywhere near perfect, but if you want to serve the superior force, the master regime, I’d say the one who doesn’t need any of the fancy blessings or holy master race genes to guarantee its victory is the safe bet. When my people take over that asshole’s country, you’ll be living in a world where names and titles won’t be curses you have to hold your tongue about. You won’t have to fear any superior or be so separate from any authority you’ll never know. You’ll be brothers-in-arms with everyone. And I mean everyone.”
I snorted. “How’s he going to do anything to me if no one’s seen him? If he wants to fight, I’ll gladly take him on. But no one but the Regent seems to talk to him. You only employ a regent if you can’t rule the country by yourself. Makes me think he’s not doing so hot, or he just plum doesn’t care about any of it. He’s not doing anything to any of you. He either can’t or he won’t. So, how about that name?”
“High Emperor Gillek Wraithmane,” Larry finally piped up. A hush fell over the other five at the mention of it. Lord, these noble names are always a peacock primmer. You might as well have named yourself ‘Biggus Dickus, He Who is Endowed so Greatly.’
“If none of you want to speak that name, his new name is King Steve from now on,” I said. “At least, that’s what I’ll be calling him. When I’m talking about Steve, I’m talking about this guy. He sounds like a Steve. What a Steve.”
“Is King Steve a mighty warrior from Rabbit legend?” Lassie, also among the boys I brought, asked me, “Or does Wraithmane’s name truly frighten you, and you wish to hide from it?”
“No, Steve’s just the name of a guy who owed me some money back in the day.” I rubbed my temple to stimulate the memory. “I didn’t like that guy back then, and I don’t like this guy now. ‘Gillek Wraithmane’ is a deliberately pompous attempt at an intimidating name to scare people, and I refuse to buy into that game. If he wants to be called that, he’ll have to come to tell me himself. So he’s Steve until that happens. Do we know anything about King Steve besides that he’s super mysterious and holy beyond comparison?”
“He’s the highest ruler, the pack leader of pack leaders,” Moe said. “From his strength flows all the authority of the pack leaders--”
“Yeah, I got that part, the head-est of head honchos.” I waved the slogan off. “Do we know anything more concrete, less ‘he was the best thing that ever did the best at things’? Size? Weight? Personality? Fighting style? Charm combos? Weird blessing power? Maybe just something like history? That should give us an idea of both how real he is and what kind of thinkers the Regent and his publicity department are.”
“The Regent and Wildheart insisted that he is the greatest of all Wolves,” Moe continued, “He’s the one who slew the one who we do not mention, for he should be slain from memory as well.”
“Really, that’s the claim to fame?” I leaned back in my chair. “I thought that nobody was supposed to talk about the Hunter, and yet that’s how he’s proving that he’s the best Wolf ever? How does that make sense?”
“The legends spread out wide,” Huey added, “Many of us are split between the two sides, that His-- King Steve had slain the Rabbit hero known as the Hunter, and that the Hunter is a Rabbit myth made by Rabbits to give them hope.”
“So he may or may not have killed a guy who may or may not have existed.” I raised an eyebrow. “That can’t be the only thing. If you’re going to make up a hokey government-mandated religion, they’d have come up with a believable story that people would have wanted to get behind. What’s something everyone can agree on?”
“He rebuilt our empire from scratch,” Louie said, “Better than it was before, grander than it ever could have been. It is because of him that we are the superior race in the Great Burrows, and it’s because of this immense strength that we seek to serve strength in our own lives. We can be as strong as he is if we follow strength like his.”
“Is that how it was phrased?” I asked him, “Specifically, the new empire is so much better than the last one? How does that not match up with the Hunter story?”
“There are alternative explanations for both.” Curly gave me a Wolfish history lesson. “One insists that the Wolves were always here, and that he was the first of us, building and creating us in his image from the creation as we are today. The others insist that there was an empire before us. These Wolves were rulers of this world at one time, but weak and lazy, stupid and ignorant. We were savages, dark creatures worth destroying. When we could have had victory, we were slaughtered by he who is now slain. His Utmost--” I glared at him. “King Steve struck the final blow at the Battle of the Broken Fang, slaying he who we do not mention. He splattered his blood into the sky, staining the moon red so we would be empowered by his victory for all of time.”
Curly cleared his throat. “Now free to restore the world to its natural state, he slowly rebuilt his power and reintroduced the Wolves back into the world. From there, he brought order to the lawless world overrun by vermin, who cower and hide. He sits at the highest peak of the Citadel of the Voice, gathering the power from the Blood Moon so he may bring the Wolf empire to the highest peak of creation.”
Alright, that was quite the informative legend. If he was real, the secret emperor of the world claimed to have been at the first incursion of Wolves from thousands of years ago. Did that mean that he remembered? He was the prime example of getting rid of that ‘Forgetting’ thing the Wolves are so worried about. That could have been propaganda again, and he was just the one who could remember the farthest. If that was him, though, and it was true, it would have explained the resurgence of Wolves much later. But why was it so much later? Did he get injured? Was that why he needed the generator for? Was it just a giant battery keeping him from powering down?
But then the Regent could have just turned the generator off, killing the secret emperor, and then turned it back on, and no one would have been the wiser. That would have meant the secret emperor really was a prop, even if he used to have been a real thing. But that was if this guy was really that devious. It would h
ave given the Regent the latitude to do whatever he wanted, including experiment with how the generator worked. Was that how the old Baron’s brass armor plates and Timberpine’s chair fit into it? Were they separate things entirely? We’d just have had to explore that avenue.
“Well, disregarding King Steve,” I changed the subject, “one strange question for you: did Wildheart have any odd pieces in his armor? Any strange plates underneath it, something he put on under the arm or the leg? Some extra piece that didn’t seem to do anything? Anything stick out to you like that?”
“Well, there was one thing he wore that seemed odd.” Curly scratched his head. “He had a belt that he wore above his waist, around his stomach. It was like a bright copper, with these round cylinders sticking out. I only saw it once when I was asked to help adjust his armor, but I didn’t want to question his wisdom.”
Bright copper oddity sounded like a brass plate doodad if I ever heard of one. They were all experimenting with the generator, turning it from a suppressing field into a siphon. The Regent was making his own super Wolves with gross powers. The Baron caught wind of that and wanted to make his own, and then Timperpine had a similar idea. Were they all just trying to give themselves powers, though? Why? It’d have had to have been because of the competition between Wolves. And maybe power jealousy towards the bunnies. They were the ones with the actual powers.
No, I had a hunch that those powers were just side-effects. The siphon was the original design. They were trying to get rid of the Forgetting by injecting themselves with magic, cutting out the middlebunny, so to speak, and the powers were just the adverse product of their experiments. They liked them, so they kept making them. The Regent would have kept a razor edge over anyone who tried to double-cross him by keeping those loyal to him supplied with crazy and unexplainable powers with his Mana Crusher, which he was selling as a magical suppressant for bunnies to not use their powers on them so he could keep it on without complaint.
